The mother of all media leaks

It's the list that's causing a stir in the media in the Middle East - and beyond.

The editor-in-chief on $54,000 a month, reporters and photographers on more than $8000, even the vacant position of "fashion assistant" paying almost $7000. That's all tax-free for these mostly Western and South Asian expatriates.

All at a newspaper owned by an arm of the Abu Dhabi government and which says it has a circulation of between 70,000 and 90,000, but which others claim sells about 2000 paid copies a day.

Someone inside the bowels of fledging UAE newspaper The National has leaked the salary details of its 253 editorial staff on the internet, or Wikileaks to be precise.

The details, believed to have been posted by a staff member upset that bonuses had been frozen or that a housing allowance of between $2400 and $3300 a month had been removed, have caused a sensation in the Middle East media world.

See what the editorial staff of The National earn here.

See what those in the Middle East media say about the leak here.

Journalists in nearby Dubai - and some seemingly from the UK and US - green in the gills at much higher salaries than the already generous packages they thought they were getting have hit the blogosphere with a bile almost only those in the media could generate, though some have claimed it was good to see their contemporaries well paid.

The list is likely to create rather a lot more envy in Australia, where journalist wages pale in comparison.

Editor Martin Newland - formerly of the UK Daily Telegraph - gets an apparently generous $650,000 a year, which would place him in the middle of metropolitan newspaper editors in this country.

But it's lower down the ranks where the gap really widens.

The National's business editor is on about $460,000 a year, his deputy $250,000. Other section editors pull in more than $170,000, while rank-and-file reporters and photographers average about $90,000, though some earn almost twice that.

And remember, that's all tax free.

The only mystery seems to be why there are 17 vacancies at the paper.

First seen in WA Today. Thanks to Chalpat Sonti and WA Today for covering this document. Copyright remains with the aforementioned.